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Friday, 31 December 2010

We are doing something a little different for Challenge # 13 at The Stampman. Last year we held our first awards event, the awards were for proudly presenting your best/favourite crafting project you feel you made during the year. We are going to hold it again this year but we are linking it with our fortnightly Challenge.

We would like you to join in the challenge, which is to show us your best/favourite project of 2010. The award blinkie is just a nice random award for anyone that joins in. Display your award blinkie on your sidebar with a link back to The Stampman challenge Blog.
The most important part of this is that we would like you all to have fun and enjoy taking time to look back on your crafting over the last year, so pick something you have made that you are particularly proud of and feel was your best/favourite work of 2010.

As part of the challenge we are hosting a Blog Hop. You should have arrived here from the lovely Janet, if not jump back to the start of the hop HERE.

Thursday, 30 December 2010

Its nearly the New Year, have you got any plans? I'm a stay at home person, have been out once on New Year in 18 years lol! Prefer to be around my kiddie winks as they're important to me so I like to see in the New Year with them :)

Anyway just a few reminders of challenges if you're looking for an excuse to use all that new stash you got! I got a letrajet for my birthday on Tuesday, the promarker airbrush system so will be playing with that soon!

Tomorrow over at The Stampman we will be hosting an end of year blog hop with candy to be won! It will run for 2 weeks and all will receive an award for presenting their favourite project of 2010! It starts at 12pm tomorrow so hope you join in the hop!

Meanwhile over at the ranch - CRAFTY CARDMAKERS is asking to see your first or oldest projects (Scroll back to your first blog posts if you have nothing older) Its a bit of fun, shows you how far you've come and some inspiring words from guests including Suzanne from Joanna Sheen's DT, Jill from The Stampman and Linda Elbourn designer for Craft Stamper. You can make an anything goes with it but you must show an old card!

There is also an Anything Goes Mega Christmas challenge over at Passion for Promarkers, it can be any theme but you just need to use your promarkers or aqua markers and loads of great prizes up for grabs!

Finally there is also an Anything Goes theme at Crafts & Me until Wednesday and the prize being 2 stamps from their new artist and let me tell you my jaw hit the floor when Teresa told me who she'd signed, wowwwwweeeeee! I am so excited to be working with this stamp range!

I'll be back tomorrow to show my favourite Stampman project so pop back!

Friday, 24 December 2010

Its our last challenge of the year over at Crafts & Me Challenges and we're having an "Anything goes" for the next 2 weeks so pop over and come play! There is a FAB prize up for grabs oh yes!

"THE PRIZE IS TWO STAMPS FROM CRAFTS AND ME OWN STAMP RANGE YET TO BE RELEASED SO YOU WILL BE ONE OF ONLY TWO PEOPLE BESIDES THE D.T'S TO HAVE THESE STAMPS ON RELEASE DAY IN JANUARY(YET TO BE ANNOUNCED)"

I am sooooo excited over these stamps let me tell you! Can't wait for the release as they are wowzers!!!

Onto my DT offering for the challenge and my DD asked me to make a candle for a client who's decor is black and silver and I came up with this, doesnt photo very well as the wax coating reflects.

There's a tutorial HERE over on Letraset how to do them. I've coloured with promarkers, the trim is the martha stewart doiley lace punch (secured with glue dots) with added iridescent crystals and I've added a silver flower with swarovski crystals on her hat.﻿

Tuesday, 21 December 2010

Good Morning! Its silly o clock here and have FLU! I havent had a proper flu for years and I'm suffering, also flaring the fibro up so popping painkillers and cant sleep. Thought I'd tell you as I dont get no sympathies from my OH *sniff*
Seeing as I cannae sleep I thought I'd blog this one which is a 2 in one. I saw the old lady image on Meesh's facebook and she told me it was by Just Inklined and I thought it would go soooo well with one of the Kenny K images. We were trying to think of funny quips about beer goggles but my OH didn't want to appear to insult his friends partner lol!

On the front is Maude Merry Christmas coloured with promarkers. I've given her tortishell glasses and glazed them and some coral lipstick as when I was a kid old ladies all wore coral lippy :)

I'm a christmas baby as is my fwend Meesh and as Christmas babies I'd like to mention that we always get forgotten about. We've lived our lives with comments such as "I got you this for xmas and your birthday" and birthday presents wrapped in spare christmas paper, tins of roses and leftover bottles of wine (I dont drink wine!) Our birthday presents being left under the christmas tree (wrapped in xmas paper and the only way you know the dfference is if happy birthday is written on the label!) We're slap bang in the middle of christmas and new year and WE WANT A BIRTHDAY like July people have!

So please spare a thought for us Christmas Babies and our forgotten birthdays and send a december baby a nice bright cheeful completely non christmas card and make their day!

Wednesday, 15 December 2010

Last one before bed - sorry for the mega posts I'm catching up again inbetween dying of Ma'am flu!
I've had a reshuffle at home so am now in the lounge which has never been the lounge its always been OH's office but with him working from home its not very appropriate when he's having a video conflab and the kids burst in shouting Daddy I've done a poo! So he's now moved to a room we have above the garage! We live in a bungalow but there's rooms everywhere, its like the tardis here! He's given me the lounge as when we have visitors we tend to go in the conservatory so now I'm settling in and finding places for my regular stash I can actually sit down and make things yay!

This is one of the new images by Lemon Shortbread from Crafts & Me, this one is Christmas Melody who you can do in any colours you like! I've added some grey shading to her dress then coloured it in with a clear sakura stardust pen so its super sparkly. I've also added a tiny pearl to her hat and ribbon.
DP's are from Bearly Mine Designs (Christmas Wonderland & Christmas Frolics) Swirl is one I've borrowed from Mrs Stampman and is Sir Tim's Elegant Flourishes. Text circle stamp is from a set by HOTP cut out with a Nellie Snellen die. Card is finished with a squirt or three of iridescent gold glimmer mist which Crafts & Me are now stocking yay!

I wrote a little tutorial for altered candles using promarkers and aqua markers over on Letraset's new blog a couple of weeks back and I'll show you a further idea using the same technique.

If you pop over to the original tutorial HERE and scroll to the 5th picture of the text stamp. I have used a stamp by Stampendous Z-M173 Wish you joy available HERE and Aqua markers in fern green and raspberry and the metallic gold promarker available here or at your regular stockist. (I used the metallic gold promarker as I don't have the gold aquamarker)

Simply use long white candles and candle holders (from Ikea) attach the wording and stars as shown in the original tutorial, add a couple of sticky gems and ribbon to the base and you've got a really quick gift set that won't set you back particularly if you live near Ikea!

Monday, 13 December 2010

Good Afternoon!! We're having very special challenge here at Crafty Cardmakers for the next 4 weeks and its something a little bit different and a lot of fun! We've also managed to pursuade the sponsors or their representative to join in the fun :)

We'd like to see your LATEST OR GREATEST creation so anything you like or a particular favourite AND here's the important bit, we'd also like to see your FIRST or the OLDEST one you have a photo of! I can see you cringing and thinking oooooh nooooo mine's really baaaad! Don't worry, we ALL started somewhere and I hope you can see from the samples that everybody was new once and with a bit of practice you can get better and you'll also see how much you've already got better by digging out your first efforts!
The Rules:

You can enter up to 3 times but each must contain a picture of one of your first designs and must be different techniques or items e.g. first card, first stamped card, first scrapbook page, first tag etc. They must also be separate posts.

You can enter your latest creations or your favourites previously published alongside your old design. You can enter in as many other challenges as you wish but many challenges do not accept older creations so just be mindful of that.

So here's some cringeworthy creations of mine to get you into the spirit of things! These are my first 3 cards hehe! I think the first one I wanted to use all the stash I had which was pretty much anything holographic, some cut outs of Newtons Law from a tissue box, peel off holograohic hearts and butterflies, mulberry paper and a random teabag rosette to show my new 'skill' of tea bag folding :)

Another holographic nightmare, its a gemni peel off on black and gold glitter card on silver holographic card with star peel offs and a sequin star (which I've probably still got!)

Getting a little bit more structure on my 3rd go but dont know where winnie the pooh quite fits in with the butterflies and flowers on funky foam theme....

This one won the Makins Clay category of Cardmaker of the Year (2007?) Yes really it did lol!

If you want a real laugh theres a whole site full of my early ones from 2003 - 2007 HERE

This is my 1st blogged card (Jan 2008)

Fast forward to now and this is the kind of stuff I do now so here's my LATEST!

Thats better lol! THANK GOD FOR PROMARKERS!! Equipment is so much more sophisticated nowadays with so any gorgeous stamps and digis available to colour in and promarkers at an affordable price so things have really stepped up several notches! This image is one of my favs to colour called 'The Butterfly Keeper' by Hannah Lynn from Crafts & Me here. I was thinking of a real clashing colour scheme and then noticed one of the kids snakes (a piece of fluffy material on a stick!) and that was turquoise and orange so thats where thats come from :) She's coloured with promarkers of course and highlights with sakura stardust pens. The globe I've filled in with a 3d gloss and the cute little text tag is from Stamping all Day here. Flowers are from Wild Orchid. DP's I'm not sure what the blue one is but the orange is dcwv pocket full of posiees and Moonglow Starburst Stains red hot poker orange from the stampman here which I've embossed with the divine swirls embossing folder.

Hope you can come and play in our challenge and see how far YOU have come!

Wednesday, 8 December 2010

Its time for another challenge at Crafts & Me and my turn to host so I have chosen one of my favourites - MOODY BLUES as in case you haven't noticed I'm rather fond of my blue promarkers!

We're also sponsored by Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps who are offering a choice of stamp from their shop HERE.

For this challenge I used the Cinderella stamp from Kraftin Kimmie which Crafts & Me stock here I just love the dress on this one, she's a joy to colour. I used the sky blue, azure and french navy for the dress to make a really rich satin blue, I've tinkered wth the photo to try and get it as true colour as I can as the dress is actually a couple of shades darker than that.

I've added some lilac versamagic around the edges and stamped using the hero arts fabulous flourish stamp. The little text is one of my favs from Stamping all Day. DP's are from Bearly Mine designs from the plaids collection and the darker blue is a freebie here. Flowers are Wild Orchid, the rosebuds I've coloured 2 tone with promarkers.

Tuesday, 7 December 2010

Following on from our blog hop & special challenge we now have a Mega Christmas challenge for you which will last until January 4th 2011. I’m sure you’ll agree that the design team deserve a little break to catch up on their last minute gifts and cards. However to make up for the lack of challenges we again have some magnificent prizes up for grabs.
Our theme for the Mega Christmas challenge is a nice easy one “anything goes”, just remember to use your promarkers or aqua markers to be eligible for our prizes. Don’t forget you can enter as many times as you like and combine with any other challenges.

So now for the exciting bit – the prizes!

Letraset are generously offering a set of 40 promarkers in specific craft colours stored in two promarker wallets – fab eh!

if that wasn’t enough - they are also offering a 25% discount to everyone on any order placed on their site during the challenge period using code PRO25 (excluding sale items)!!

For this challenge I wanted to step away from the Christmas cards and challenge myself a little bit. I don't do pastels very often (as you may have noticed!)﻿ so I went for a really pastel look using my new stamp I actually won from Passion for Promarkers before I was on the DT a few weeks ago. Its called Dancing Willow by Whiff of Joy and I liked the fun she seemed to be having!

I've coloured her with promarkers using baby pink, salmon pink and coral for the dress and pear green and moss for the green bits. I've added a little bt of sparkle in her hair with a sakura stardust clear pen. Papers are a mix of Bearly Mine Designs and My Minds Eye, ribbon is Stampin' Up, flowers are from Wild Orchid (gosh how excited do you get when you're waiting for a delivery from there lol!)

Hope you like my NON Christmas card and join in the Anything Goes fun at Passion for Prommarkers!

Monday, 6 December 2010

Good Morning! I've been asked a couple of times how I did the beads on Melody's Dress so thought I'd show you how I created some tones and the bead effect.
For this I've used promarkers, the purples I chose were ORCHID, PURPLE & AUBERGINE. For the beads you will need an opaque white pen, preferably ball point such as Inkssentials.

STEP 1 - Colour your face tones in (previous tutorial here) then use the ORCHID promarker and colour most of the dress and hat in. Next take the PURPLE promarker and add some shading as shown below leaving part of the Orchid showing.

Step 2 - Use your Orchid promarker and colour over all of the hat and dress to blend it with the purple then take the AUBERGINE promarker and add darker shading as below. Colour rings of Aubergine underneath the beads to give a shadow effect. Again use your Orchid and blend all the colours together.

Step 3 - Continue to add Aubergine and blend in with the Orchid, you may need to do this a couple of time until you're happy with the tones achieved. I've added a dark patch on the left hand part of the dress now and under her left hand for a deep shadow.

Adding the beads - For the beads I used a ball point type pen rather than my usual sakura souffle whch has a fatter nib. I used a white opaque pen by Inkssentials and if you press hard it leaves a dint rather than a solid white dot on some of them which gives a good effect :) If you press softly you will get a solid white dot.

Detail of the beads.

Finished Card

I've used papers by Bearly Mine Designs﻿ and are from the Christmas Sparkle pack, Stripes and Just Plaids. I've added lilac ink around the image using versachalk ink and stamped swirls from the gorgeous Hero Arts 'Fabulous Flourish' in the corners. I used some shimmery lilac two tone ribbon, a ribbon flower and shimmery white flower for her hat (All from Hobbycraft) and the sentiment is I *think* HOTP from a set.

Sunday, 5 December 2010

Its a new challenge over at The Stampman this fortnight and its a Tri Colour Christmas challenge. For this I decided to make something different as I've never altered a jar before so first time for everything! I went for a blue/silver/white combo and started by using Tim Holtz Shabby Vintage paper on silver & blue card. The sentiment is embossed and is by Stampendous - Wish you Joy which I cut out with Nesties Labels 11. I painted the lid with adirondack dabbers (pearl white, aqua and sailboat blue) added some fluffy fibres and a big felt snowflake (stampin' Up fankoo Sheilakins!)